Out of Time
by RamblerGaelige
Summary: During the Gunfight at the OK Corral, Doc Holliday is shot and blasted into a future time. Lots of Doc abuse. ABANDONED, due to irreconcilable time conflicts.
1. Prologue

Prologue

John Holliday felt the impact of the bullet as acutely as if he'd been chased down for a kiss by a speeding locomotive. The face of Ike Clanton, over the smoking gun that had just ripped a wound through his upper left chest, and the face of Wyatt Earp, stretched in a barbaric grin as he burned off ammunition, blurred and wavered like John had fallen underwater. "Well," he said vaguely, feeling much as though he had, even with the street outside the OK Corral drier than cattle bones, "You're a daisy, Ike."

The world exploded into green and purple stars, centered around the searing pain just below his collarbone and the beginnings of a rattle in his lungs. _Not now, _he thought. _I'm shot and bleeding and I surely do not need to cough any blood. _Holliday staggered away from the gunshots, the smoke and yelling and chaos. "Peculiar," he muttered. The buildings of Tombstone seemed for a moment to be taller, broader... shiny.

Now very confused and feeling as though a badger was making a nest of his chest, Holliday fainted.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter I

A klaxon hooted, signalling an impending arrival by ambulance. "Aw, hell," Nurse Elizabeth Dooley swore softly as she raced through Triage into the trauma centre. She called out to the ER secretary as she blew past. "Lonnie! What's coming in?"

"Got a circa three-oh male, gunshot wound to the shoulder, cyanotic and haemoptic. Code Three." Lonnie brushed back her over-bleached hair and exposed widely spaced teeth, stained with 50 - odd years of coffee and nicotine. "Have fun, sugar pumpkin!"

"Fun. Right." Some days Elizabeth wondered why she'd become a nurse. To be more accurate, she questioned her own sanity for agreeing to be "floated" to the ER in place of a nurse who'd come down with cellulitis. Thank heaven this was her last night floating. In the past three days, she had discovered that instead of the usual, rather routine post-op and post-ER cases of the medical-surgical floor, there were, at any hour, guaranteed to be at least 3 Little Old Ladies in No Apparent Distress coming through Triage claiming outlandish illnesses, on top of the Monday morning work shirkers and the whining mothers insisting that their nine-year-old with a cough x2 hours be seen NOW, not later, and certainly before the motorcycle accident with avulsed tibia. It had to be the most patience-draining department of the hospital. "Gunshot wound, cyanotic, haemoptic, might have nicked the lung. Chest tubes." Elizabeth smirked sardonically. "Walk in the park." Gathering a deep breath, she elbow-shoved through a pair of swinging doors painted the same pale green as many mental hospitals.

From relative quiet, made soothingly boring by ringing telephones, muffled conversation, and occasional calls over the loudspeaker, Elizabeth may as well have stepped into a beehive that's just been knocked off its stand. Trauma was practically vibrating with doctors calling orders over a general din of carts wheeling about, the regular "bweep" of heart monitors, and the dull roar common to any large group of people in a small, hard-floored space. "Dooley!" An almost comically slender doctor bawled from behind a parted curtain. "Over here!"

"Yes, Dr Caldwell!" Elizabeth grabbed gloves from a box attached to the wall and snapped them over her flexed hands. "Is this the three-oh male, GSW, cyanotic with haemoptysis?"

"Damn straight. GSW was a flesh wound, patch it up and let's worry about this haemoptysis. Patient claims to have been mildly intoxicated prior to the incident - says he was shot by a man called Clanton, and that his own name is - get this - John Holliday. I think he's delirious. Well, it beats a night of hangnails coming in by EMS or Bubba Jim with a fishhook in his cheek bringing Daisy Mae and the whole family." Caldwell extended a bloody glove and offered a comradely grin. "Welcome to the snake pit."

Elizabeth smiled in return. "Forgive me if I don't shake hands," she called over her shoulder as she opened drawers. Betadine, gauze pads, surgical tape, skin scissors. _Set, _she thought, then, really seeing the patient for the first time, _Poor bastard. _She whisked the curtains shut.

The youngish man was viciously pale, the sort of ashy colour that comes from suntan on top of serious illness. He watched her in a manner that suggested that she might have recently turned brilliantly purple and sprouted lettuce for hair. Elizabeth grinned weakly, in what she sensed was a very futile attempt to put him at ease. "Hi there. I'm Elizabeth Dooley, and I'll be your nurse tonight." She swabbed the gouge on his collarbone carefully, working from the centre of the wound out and covering it with a tea-coloured blotch of Betadine. "So what do they call you when you're at home?"

"I'm Holliday, Miss Dooley. John Holliday. I ask your forgiveness for my state of undress, but your carriage doctors were very insistent that my shirt be removed."

Elizabeth blinked and very nearly dropped the gauze. "What's that, again?"

He coughed damply and inhaled with an audible wheeze. "John Henry Holliday, Doctor of Dental Surgery. It's perfectly fine, ma'am. The good doctor here found it somewhat... unusual as well. This is an unusual place. You have doctors who ride about in carriages, need no horses, and carry air in barrels. They have also stuck a needle into my hand - " He waved his left hand about, setting the IV tubes flapping " - about which I am not entirely pleased."

"Uh huh." Secretly, she wondered if Dr Caldwell had ordered a Psych consult on Holliday, who seemed to have delusions of Southern-ness, even down to the accent. "And how's the weather in Tombstone, Dr Holliday?" She covered the wound gently with a 4 by 4 bandage and began taping it down. "Dr Caldwell, Mr Holliday seems febrile." Elizabeth glanced around, seeing Caldwell nowhere in the Centre. She shrugged and applied another strip of tape, scraping it down with a fingernail.

Holliday gazed at her with perfect innocence. "Miss Dooley, I am surprised that everybody in this - hospital? appears to know my entire history. I must be more notorious than I had thought. Now Tombstone - it is the driest place I have ever had the chance to visit. Why, it's so hot in the middle of the day that I could walk outside, pick up a rabbit, and find it ready-cooked."

"Is that so?"

"Ma'am, it is a solemn fact. I have rarely been more serious in games of faro." For a moment, Holliday appeared confused, and coughed meditatively. Elizabeth watched him with raised eyebrows. "How are you feeling there, Dr Holliday?"

"I'm right... as the mail..." His voice trailed off as he coughed again, very wetly, and blood spattered his chest and the sheet covering him. Elizabeth jumped back. "Dr Caldwell! Haemoptysis!" Caldwell strode over in an excellent imitation of a heron, followed by a harried blond student nurse loaded down with tubes and dragging a cart of imposing equipment. "I hear you! Kelly, you and Dooley prepare Mr Holliday for bronchoscopy. Mr Holliday?" Caldwell bent over Holliday kindly. Holliday nodded lethargically. Elizabeth walked briskly to the meds cabinet and searched her key ring for the proper key.

Caldwell snatched a spray of Lidocaine from a tray. "I'm going to have to thread this camera - " he waved the endoscope at Holliday like a grotesquely long worm " - down your throat, into your lungs, to see where the blood's coming from. Miss Dooley's going to give you a sedative, so you'll be mostly asleep through the whole thing. Do you understand the procedure?" Holliday shook his head and spoke, very breathlessly. "Doctor, I don't understand one bit of what's going on. Just fix me, please." He coughed, smearing his lips with blood, and grimaced. Sweat snaked down his forehead and Dr Caldwell noted that Holliday had become even paler, if that was possible. "Jesus God, Doctor, it hurts."

Caldwell nodded. "Can you tell me which side you think the bleeding is coming from?" Holliday's cat-blue eyes, bloodshot with, Caldwell guessed, exhaustion and fever, flicked about the room as he nodded. "Right side."

Flicking air bubbles into the hub of the syringe, Elizabeth approached with eight milligrams of diazepam. "You'll feel wonderful in about thirty seconds, Dr Holliday. Just relax and breathe. We'll have you all right in not much time flat." She carefully speared the cannula running into Holliday's left hand and pushed down the plunger.

"Miss Dooley?"

"Mmhmm?" Elizabeth looked up from the cannula, glancing quizzically at the student nurse, who had her stethoscope's bell over Holliday's right chest. "What is it, Kelly?"

Kelly bit her lower lip. "Basal crepitations, I think. Mr Holliday's right inferior lobe - well, it sounds like it's full of Velcro. I might be wrong. Could you please check it?" She danced backward, wringing her fingers. Elizabeth recapped the syringe and dropped it into the dangerously red Sharps container. Sidling around Dr Caldwell, she unwound her stethoscope and listened for herself. With every rise of Holliday's chest, the sound of Velcro unzipping echoed in her ears, with a distinct pause between inspiration and exhalation. "Kelly, did you notice that his breathing is also bronchial?"

"I didn't. But, Miss Dooley - Mr Holliday's febrile, coughing, haemoptic, and looks awfully thin to me." Kelly's eyes were round as saucers as she lightly nibbled her lower lip. "I might be wrong. I think he's a textbook TB case."

Elizabeth nodded sagely and adjusted the drip rate of Holliday's IV. "I wouldn't say you're wrong there. Dr Caldwell?"

"Kudos to Kelly for her astute observations," Caldwell remarked dryly. He began slowly to withdraw the endoscope's tube. "The bleeder's a small vessel in the right lung. It ought to stop on its own within 3 hours. Kelly, call an orderly. Have him take Mr Holliday up to x-ray. I'll call the order in for anterior and posterior chest films. Dooley, get Lonnie to bug the pharmacy for meds." He grabbed a pad from a cluttered shelf and scribbled hastily. "Isoniazid, rifampin, ethambutol - send 'em up to Med - Surg. Call the girls yourself, please. Isolation precautions on Mr Holliday here." Caldwell paused babbling and peeled his gloves off. "I'm forgetting something." His face worked like an amnesiac stork's.

Elizabeth fought to stifle a giggle. "Long night, Dr Caldwell. I think you want a Mantoux test on Holliday. I'll get that. It's a free moment, grab yourself some coffee before you forget something serious."

"I'm gone." Caldwell vanished through the curtain, leaving it fluttering errantly, and Elizabeth alone with Holliday. She shook her head and unlocked a coffin-sized industrial refrigerator, removing a rubber-topped jar of tuberculin serum. She initialed a sheet taped to the door, and twitched in minor shock as her name was called.

"Mizzz Dooley?" Holliday's pleasant southern drawl had combined with the sedative to ludicrous result. "I am sorry to bother you -" Elizabeth stabbed the rubber stopper with one quick movement and drew one-tenth of one CC into a narrow syringe. "I don't mind, Dr Holliday. What do you need?" She edged back through the curtains, holding the syringe carefully aloft. Holliday smiled. "Ma'am, I would appreciate it greatly if you could explain a few things to me."

"Left arm, Dr Holliday." She inserted the needle at a shallow angle, injecting the serum in what would have been, had it been on Holliday's foot, a prize-winning fluid-filled blister. He winced and coughed. Elizabeth paused in anticipation, expecting further blood, but there was none. Holliday looked giddily back at her, looking like a man who can't remember when he's last slept. "Things like whatever it is you have done to my arm at present, Miss Dooley." She shrugged and dropped the syringe into a Sharps container. "Ask away."

"Well, let me think about that, ma'am. This afternoon, I was in the Arizona Territory, having a mild altercation with several low types. The weather was tragically sunny. A _very _low type, by the name of Ike Clanton, shot me somewhere near my shoulder while Wyatt Earp covered my back. Now mind, the result of that - " he nodded to the bandage " - is still very much here. However, I believe I fainted right then. The strangest thing was how the buildings went from low and wooden to fantastically high and shiny just as I fell. I woke up inside some extremely interesting sort of conveyance, with two doctors who had tied me to a bed and insisted that the removal of my shirt - a wonderful, new Egyptian cotton - was necessary and had to be facilitated by scissors. I was brought here, and frankly, I find this place unbearably weird. The women wear trousers, the men wear dresses, and you all put needles in my entirely too often for my liking." He sighed and coughed. "Kindly bring me up to date on my situation, Miss Dooley."

Elizabeth blinked. "Ah... where to begin? Arizona. You're in California - not a territory, hasn't been for 150 years. Ike Clanton.. I don't think I've heard that name since the final exam in high-school American History. Some kind of outlaw in the Old West, anyway, about 120 years ago. Wyatt Earp.. good grief. He died ages ago and half of what you hear is myth anyway. I can't explain the buildings. I mean the wooden ones. There just aren't any wooden buildings in the area - earthquake regulations. You've got a fever of 102.4', so maybe hallucinations. The "interesting conveyance"... all right, Dr Holliday, quit the funny business. " She fixed him with a hairy eyeball. "You're trying to tell me that you've never heard of an ambulance? And those were paramedics, not doctors; it was a gurney, not a bed, and they had to cut your shirt off to access your wound and assess your vital signs. If you woke up in the ambulance, then you were not conscious to unbutton your shirt when that action was needed. This "unbearably weird" place is a hospital... sick people are treated here... You, honestly, are very sick. Advanced pulmonary tuberculosis, which will be confirmed by the skin test I just performed and the chest x-ray you'll have later. Why, what's wrong?"

Holliday looked very pained. "I prefer to not have my illness mentioned, Miss Dooley. It has caused me no end of grief in the ten years I have been cogent to its presence."

"Ahh. I'm sorry, Dr Holliday. People are going to mention it to you on a very regular basis while you're here." He grimaced, and furiously brushed at his eyes with his right hand. "Exactly how the hell long will I be here, Miss Dooley?"

Elizabeth shifted uncomfortably. Grown men crying had never put her at ease. "Could be a month... you'll be in isolation until the anti-TB drugs take sufficient effect, and then until you gain some weight. Hey, don't cry, Dr Holliday. You'll be on my floor - I go back there tomorrow, I'm only in the ER because another nurse is out sick - and we're a good floor. You'll like the nurses, I promise." Holliday nodded silently. "I do hope you are correct, Miss Dooley. You'll have to explain some more now -"

A young Hispanic popped an incongruously mustached face through the curtains. "John Holliday? I got orders to take you to X-ray now." He grinned widely. "C'mon, hombre. Carlo's a laugh a minute."

Holliday raised an eyebrow. "Miss Dooley, I become further perturbed every minute. For now, I bid you adieu."

"Have fun with Carlo, Dr Holliday. Don't kill him with those gurney races, Carlo. Oh, come on, I know you and Dave do." Elizabeth sighed and walked over to the telephone.

"Med-Surg, this is Elena."

"Hey, Elena, this is Elizabeth, down in Emergency for now. You've got a new admit coming up, isolation precautions. Name's John Holliday -"

"No kidding. Like Doc Holliday?"

"Yep. Same name. The admitting diagnosis is, get this, pulmonary TB."

"World's full of coincidences. Isolation precautions?"

"Yes. He also claims to have been zapped from Tombstone to here when Ike Clanton shot him."

"Who's the admitting physician?"

"Caldwell. He's ordered isoniazid, rifampin, and ethambutol by mouth, once daily. Typical TB stuff. Pharm should be sending it up with the patient. Carlo's just taken him off to X-ray, posterior and anterior chest films. I'll send the charts up with an orderly when I've done them."

"Good girl. Isolation's a real P.I.T.A. Aren't you coming back up here on evening shift tomorrow?"

"Sure thing. I take report from that agency nurse, Loretta, right?"

"Mmhm. Take care, Elizabeth." Elena rang off. Elizabeth popped her knuckles and tapped Lonnie's window. "Caldwell give you the orders for the pharmacy, patient name Holliday?"

Lonnie smirked, virtually reeking of saccharine. "Already called it up, sweetie. I don't think I've heard the name Holliday outside of a Western."

"That's what Elena up on Med-Surg said. Well, she said 'Like Doc Holliday?' The world's full of coincidences." Elizabeth sighed and retied her straggling dark-blonde ponytail. "Charting needs done. Thanks very much, Lonnie." As she wandered to the nurses' station, Elizabeth couldn't keep the thought from her mind that the shift had started out thoroughly weird.

She prayed sincerely that it would not get any weirder. 


	3. Chapter 2

"Dr Holliday?" Elizabeth, appearing quite absurd in a surgical mask, gown, and gloves, craned her neck into Doc's sparely furnished room. She found Holliday sitting up in bed, entirely fascinated by a cheerleading competition on ESPN-2.

"Why, Miss Dooley. Good afternoon." His eyes did not leave the television set for a moment. "These women are… astonishing… Look! Right there, that red – head. She has the secret of human flight, or so it appears." Doc's eyes glittered and his mouth gaped slightly as he followed the cheerleader's airborne progress with a finger. "Did you ever see such a thing?" Grateful astonishment was evident on his face, now gaining a bit of healthy colour and showing that he'd had, for the first time in at least weeks, some decent rest.

Elizabeth tittered and grinned. "Of course. I did that for three years, you know – except that I was one of the girls who throw the flyers." She brandished a bursting paper sack at Holliday. "Your things have finally found you."

"Do tell." Doc gracefully killed the television with a remote control. "That swarthy beauty Miss Cardenas – she would be even more lustrous in proper clothing – introduced me to your hello-vision this morning."

"That's a television, Dr Holliday. Anyway," Elizabeth set the paper sack beside Doc's legs, shrouded in the thin pink blankets peculiar to hospitals, "let's see here. One pair grey trousers, one red waistcoat, one shirt – well, the paramedics ruined that, I regret to say." She held up a wonderfully soft cotton shirt, the front neatly bisected to the left of the buttons.

Doc sighed, eyes faraway and wistful. "I must then continue with this flimsy object?" He plucked at the admittedly scanty hospital gown with obvious contempt."

"Afraid so. One collar, one –" Elizabeth's eyes widened – "shoulder holster, one pair boots and one pair socks." She unconsciously arranged the socks into a tidy ball. "Separate collar. I don't think I've seen outside of old family photos. Hand-sewn shirt, too!" Winking impishly, she folded the sack. "You know the good life, Dr Holliday."

Doc stared back blankly, exactly as though she'd suggested that he routinely wandered about stark naked save for a teacup as a hat. "A respectable man, Miss Dooley, does not purchase ready-mades." He wet his lips carefully then coughed, much more softly than he had two days before, but still wetly and harsh. "Where," he inquired anxiously, "are my guns, my watch, and my money?" Holliday fixed Elizabeth with a fishy glare.

She fidgeted uncomfortably under his gaze, which, fired from huge and hugely blue eyes, was truly gimlet-like. "Your money and your watch would be in the safe. The gun – I don't know. Unlicenced fire-arm and all. The police may have confiscated it."

"Licence?" Doc exercised his left eyebrow dubiously. "Well, that is news. Miss Dooley, I apologise for my harsh tone. Thank you so very much for the return of my possessions." Fondly, he patted the obviously slim-fitted trousers.

"No matter." Elizabeth paused, and broke the question that had occupied her mind since Holliday's admission. "You talk, dress, and act like you came out of a Western or something. You don't honestly think that that's right, do you? It's crazy." She tossed up her hands. "I mean, yesterday you told me that it was October of 1881. You know it's 2005, don't you?" Crossing to Doc's night table, she noted a pill cup with one caplet remaining. "Dr Holliday, why haven't you taken the isoniazid today? Dr Holliday? Oh, my gosh, I'm sorry."

Holliday had turned his face to the wall and quivered silently, disconsolately weeping. "Miss Dooley," he said, gulping, in strained tones, "My mother passed on when I was sixteen. This same disease killed her. I have rarely felt so hollow or solitary since. Ma'am, I find that nothing and nobody here is familiar – the calendar year, anybody's mode of speech or dress – even the food is from another planet. By rights, it could be Jupiter. You look extraordinary enough in that – ensemble." He furiously scrubbed at his eyes and snuffled. "No matter. No matter indeed. How Wyatt would laugh at Doc Holliday, sobbing like a fussy child." Doc attempted a wan smile. "I am merely over-wrought, Miss Dooley. Forgive me."

Elizabeth felt a sudden flush creeping up her neck to her hairline. Clearing her throat against the sheer embarrassment of watching Holliday weep, she gently sat on the bed's edge and patted his lower leg. "All right. My fault, anyway. I do need to know why you haven't taken the isoniazid, though."

He grimaced. "To be truthful, I began to feel quite nauseated after the first pill. I wouldn't wish the feeling on a Yankee while in my illest temper."

"Quite nauseated," Elizabeth repeated, sifting through old material medica lectures in her brain. She jumped up in an exquisite jack-in-the-box impression. "Are you a heavy drinker, Dr Holliday?"

Doc shrugged. "There are some who would certainly argue to that end. What of it?"

"Gurk! Do NOT take that pill – it could do some interesting things to your liver. Trust me. I'm sorry – I'll call Dr Caldwell and get this fixed, and murder him while I'm at it. The man shouldn't be allowed to practise medicine without coffee first." Elizabeth darted into an anteroom, mumbling darkly and stripping off the isolation gear. "Isoniazid – where'd you get that MD, from a Cracker-Jack box? Real swift, giving a drug with the potential for serious liver damage to a man who drinks like a fish!" She swerved abruptly into the hallway and met up with a human-shaped obstacle that knocked her flat onto her bottom.

"Oh, damn," said a vaguely reedy voice conversationally. Elizabeth looked up, viewing her attacker, who had also apparently been rendered violently prostrate. It was Jean Bruster, with a 'u', not a 'w,' which made all the connotational difference in the world, a friend from college with whom Elizabeth was still fairly tight. The skinny, fluffy-haired blond leaped up, offering a hand to her fallen comrade.

"Aha! Just the person I was hoping to molest. Er, make off with. Appropriate," Jean amended several times, levering her friend to her feet. "At a word, shall we do lunch?"

"Where did you spring from?" inquired Elizabeth, blinking owlishly.

"Everywhere and nowhere at all. Really, if one has persuasive skills one can find anybody in this place," smirked Jean, twirling an index finger in a slow circle. Elizabeth sighed.

"It's almost time for my break, and I suppose it wouldn't make any difference," she said, smiling bleakly. "But I need to change a medication order before that. And you should really wash your hands. I just came out of an isolation room."

Jean perked up even more, if that was possible.

"Oh, really? What disease?"

"Tuberculosis. Go wash your hands, and I'll meet you in the cafeteria in five," said Elizabeth, shooing Jean in the direction of the elevators. Jean scampered, loping towards the elevator shaft with a twiddling wave over her shoulder before pushing the button. Minutes later, she emerged into another hallway, looked around ferret-like, and started off in what she thought was the direction of the cafeteria.

By the time Jean was finished being lost and finally found the cafeteria, Elizabeth was already there, eating something only identifiable by the soy sauce as Asian. Jean plopped down opposite her friend and wrinkled her nose at the mess on the plate.

"I smell dead cat," said Jean. "This place doesn't back onto a pet store, does it? I've never trusted Chinese food since the unfortunate affair of the discount hamsters."

"This is a hospital. Pets aren't allowed, but the morgue is right down the hall," said Elizabeth, completely straight-faced, spearing another forkful of indefinable Oriental.

Their gazes met, and the two women burst into fits of laughter. Jean was the first to recover, her laughter turning to a quiet cough, which she smothered in the tassels of her scarf.

"So," said Jean, steepling her fingers like the evil mastermind of a bad spy thriller. "Tuberculosis in Isolation. You must tell me all."

"Did you wash your hands?" asked Elizabeth, raising an eyebrow. Jean nodded irritably, and Elizabeth continued. "Came in two days ago, beginning of the shift, gunshot wound to the shoulder, cyanotic and haemoptic, awfully tachy and kind of febrile. We did a bronchoscopy, and sent him for posterior and anterior chest films. Confirmed advanced pulmonary disease, treated with isoniazid, rifampin, and ethambutol ex one daily. Except I had to beat the attending over the head with a Foley cath and get that isoniazid changed to pyrazinamide. Liver damage is a bad, bad thing in a chronic heavy drinker." Jean's eyebrow twitched.

"You lost me after 'shoulder,'" she monotoned. Elizabeth sighed and attempted to put her explanation into layman's terms.

"Honestly, you teach Latin—can't you deduce what I'm saying from that? Nevermind. He was blue around the mouth – not getting enough oxygen, and he was coughing up blood. Rapid pulse and fever. We stuck a camera into his lungs and sent him for front and back chest x-rays. Poor guy's got TB pretty well, but should polish up with the treatment. Isoniazid, rifampin, and ethambutol are the drugs the attending prescribed – but the isoniazid had to be switched for pyrazinamide because of the possibility of serious liver damage." Elizabeth lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I can't mention his name, but I think he's a wee bit touched upstairs as well."

"Do tell? Oh, and Hippocrates and Theophrastus were Greek—I can't be expected to know medical terms if they're from the Greek," replied Jean genially.

"You're smarter than you look, so you could at least try," snorted Elizabeth. "Anyway, he seems convinced that he's from Tombstone, Arizona, circa 1881. Really, he seems to believe that he's Doc Holliday, of all people – dresses, acts, and talks the part. He appears totally unfamiliar with modern times, Jean. The night he came in, the man didn't know what the ambulance was, why- " she indicated her separately clad legs "-I wasn't wearing a dress, why the attending was. I brought him his possessions just before you attempted to kill me. The clothes are all hand-sewn, he wears heavy leather pull-on boots, and he carries a shoulder holster. He'd be extremely persuasive at a re-enactors' ball."

"How intriguing," murmured Jean, a glint in her eye Elizabeth had come to know and fear. "And how extraordinary, that he has taken this reenactment, this delusion, to the extent of contracting consumption, much like the real doctor."

"Coincidence. It's mad, but it must be," said Elizabeth. "Still, he is, as you say, intriguing."

"Might I be able to meet him?" asked Jean innocuously. Elizabeth fixed her with a stare.

"He's in isolation for a reason. Somehow, I think that you would not relish the thought of, number one, taking pills at the same time each day for months or more, and two, having your sweat turn red and your liver slightly damaged from the drugs. You aren't the healthiest person in the world already, and even if you were I couldn't let you in to meet him," explained Elizabeth, rather wearily. Jean remained undaunted.

"Could I gibber at him through the door?" she asked. Elizabeth sighed again. She sighed a lot around Jean.

"Fine. You'll plague me until I let you. But do let me finish eating," she said primly, forking another mess of Asian into her mouth.

In the hallway, Jean attempted to explain her motives. Or rather, her motives beyond simple morbid curiosity.

"Now, in all the old legends it says Holliday spoke Latin. It's by no means a common language, or one with much practical use in this modern era. However, Holliday used it conversationally in his time. If this patient of yours can converse with me, a college Latin professor, on the same level…"

"The patient's a dentist, or so he claims. I haven't made further inquiries of him. Do dentists know much Latin?"

"He's a dentist? Holliday was a dentist! I know, I did some reading on him when I first found out he spoke Latin. Damn, was I a Latin fangirl in high school… anyway, no, dentists do not necessarily know Latin. My uncle is one and he can't conjugate so much as esse if his life depended on it."

"Even if he can speak Latin, that doesn't mean he's really Doc Holliday. I mean—time travel—it's a bit far out there, Jean."

"Nothing is too far out there to be real, my dear Elizabeth. I mean, you believe that bread honestly turns into God," needled Jean.

"Bloody Protestant," grumbled Elizabeth as they boarded the elevator. "There's no evidence for time travel, though."

"I beg to differ. Do you want me to get out my collection of History channel specials? There are several theories about the possibility of time travel, it is merely my ill luck that majority of them are sniffed at by the scientific community. Still, you can't explain away the Bermuda Triangle, at least," postulated Jean.

"How did you get Bermuda from that? Never mind. You can't go in, but he should be able to hear you through the door," said Elizabeth, as they emerged from the elevator into the hallway. "And please—don't make me ashamed of you."

Jean managed to look injured and giddy at the same time.

"When have I ever made you ashamed of me?" she grinned, and peered in at Holliday. His face was turned away from the window, and Jean rapped at it to get his attention. Doc started and swiveled towards the door. His mouth gaped slightly at the manically waving, cheerily grinning specter visible through the portal.

"Salve, peregrinus!" chirped Jane. "Quid est?" Holliday's left eyebrow did a push-up.

"Quid est? Unde discedit lingua Latin? Horribilis locutionisti es," Doc drawled sharply. Jane let out a small gasp, drawing somewhat back from the window and placing a hand over her mouth as if offended. Her eyes, however, shone with glee.

"Quam contumeliosus! Quam impudicus! Quid alaudae, es pervicaciter mirabilis. Tamen, non respondisti ad interrogationem meum. Sum Jean, Jean Bruster. Esne bene?" she asked again, cocking her head to the side. Doc seemed to truly consider this time before answering.

"Sum Holliday, vocatus Doc. Minime. Sum miserandus. Nihil familiaris. Omnes mirificus. Etiam iste lingua, quod saepe conferit alienatii hominis, etiam iste mirificus est. Sed dice. Ad me dice, enim vocem tuam, linguam tuam, solus familiaris," he said, hollowly, staring at Jean. The usually bright girl was subdued.

"E…eheu," was all she could think to say momentarily. "Pu…putavi non—numquam curas. Tam tristis es! Volo, sed necesse est mihi deserere te. Disco Latin. Vale, me care!" Jean called, pulling away from the window before she did something she would probably regret.

"Agi quid agis," murmured Doc in farewell, but nobody heard him. Jean jerkily checked her wristwatch.

"Oh, catalepsy! I have my afternoon class in little less than a half an hour, and I forgot to set up. I need to go," she said, doing a fidgety little dance. Elizabeth stared at her.

"I didn't understand a word of that, but I know you well enough to realize something's up. What did you say? What did he say?" she pestered, following Jean down the hallway. Jean turned around sharply, forcing Elizabeth to skid in order to not collide with her.

"Church Latin" she hissed, with a peculiarly fanatical look. "He was hard on his v's and soft on his c's. They teach Roman Latin in schools these days, and he is so eloquent that it would be impossible for him not to be school educated. Believe what you may, my dear Elizabeth, I, for one am convinced. Full-on, devil-take-it persuaded."

"It's not possible," restated Elizabeth, planting her knuckles on her hips. "What if her were educated overseas? It's not proof positive – Jane!" Elizabeth called, but Jane continued walking sharply down the hall, looking back for no one.

Author's notes: Greetings and salutations! Welcome and allow me to be the first to introduce you to RamblerGaelige's firstever, joint-effort Tombstone fanfic! This is the Rambler half writing, author of this chapter. TheGaelige half wrote the prologue and first.

First of all, let me pinpoint and delegate what are, for the most part, our areas of peculiar expertise. Gaelige is well on her way to becoming a nurse, knows more about consumption than your average modern physician, routinely spouts medical technobabble about which I can only assume she knows what she is talking about, and has an acute grasp of the romantic and tragic. I, on the other hand, am aspiring to make writing my trade, make up my own words, fancy myself stylist and humorist, and at age sixteen have six years of high school level Latin under my belt. That's more than most college seniors, if you're doing the math.

Please assume that all medical what-have-you in this fic is accurate, likewise for Latin dialogue. We're fairly sure we know what we're talking about.

P.S.: 'Quam impudicus' effectively means 'how lewd.' Chances are you'll see it again, along with 'Quid est.' :D

Further author's notes: I, Gaelige, will now be providing a translation. Without one, the conversation fails to further the story.

Jean: Hello, stranger! What's up?

Doc: 'What's up?' Where did you learn Latin? Your elocution is terrible.

Jean: How impolite! How lewd! (somethingsomething) Now, you have not answered my question. I am Jean, Jean Bruster. Are you well?

Doc: I am Holliday, called Doc. No. I am miserable. Nothing is familiar. All is strange. Speak. Speak to me. Only your voice, your language, is familiar to me.

Jean: ... Oh dear. Don't feel like that. You're so sad. I'm sorry, but I must leave now. I teach Latin. Take care, my dear.

Doc: Do what you must.

Feel free to shoot me an e-mail if you need medical terminology explained.

Dane Lurex: Thank you. Medical terms are fun, no?

Ash10: You get your wish.

Rhody420: Thanks! I assume you received my message?


	4. Chapter 3

_ I (gaelige) apologise for the shortness of this chapter. I tested positive for tuberculosis infection yesterday (oh, the irony!), so I'm nattering around in a bit of a furor until I find out if I actually have active TB (what Doc has). _

Elizabeth rapped softly at Doc's door. "Dr Holliday?" She smiled cheerfully, but there was abject silence from within. Elizabeth shrugged and knocked again. "Dr Holliday? It's time for vitals again." She sidled through the door, cursing softly when her bile-green scrub gown caught momentarily on the casters of an IV pole.

_Wait. An IV pole? _Elizabeth gaped foolishly at it. "What are you doing over here?" she muttered. It ought to be at the head of the bed: at the head of the bed, with Dr Holliday attached. _Dr Holliday! _She whirled in place. Said person was indeed, safely abed, casting vituperative glares that would have made Genghis Khan scream for his teddy bear. Elizabeth was, however, a nurse, not a Mongolian dictator, and she stalked right over to Doc.

"Glad to see you haven't escaped, Dr Holliday." She skewered Doc with a sort of "Be nice, and I may use anaesthetic" look. He stared back wildly.

"Why, Kate. Whatever do you mean?" His eyes swam glassily, pupils enormously dilated in an expanse of bloodshot sclera.

"Kate?" Elizabeth crossed closer to Doc and studied him intently. "Who's Kate, Dr Holliday?"

"Why, you are. Hungarian she-devil. This is purely the worst boarding-house you have found for us yet." Doc sighed. "Damn all, Kate, the proprietors tethered me to the bed with needles and noodles!" His forehead rumpled; Elizabeth noted that he was flushed red as brick dust and greasy with perspiration. "Some foul rascal absconded with my clothing, but I have got it back. The bastards took the money and my guns." He threw back the covers viciously and emerged, fully dressed in boots, grey woollen trousers, and grey coat, with the ruined shirt and collar drooping mournfully open beneath.

Elizabeth sucked in a violently ennervated breath. _Act casual, stupid._ "So, Doc," she asked, "when did you get yourself loose?" Inwardly, she was squawking obscenities. The glucose solution and vitamins that drained into Doc's vascular system continuously were keeping the mild symptoms of his ethanol alcohol withdrawal from progressing to something worse. Without that safeguard, he could progress to full-on delirium tremens.

Doc smirked lewdly and coughed softly. "This morning, my sweet woman. Toward eleven, I would say. I have nothing to pack, so shall we repossess my money and pistols and depart?"

_Five hours! Five hours. How the hell did the day shift not notice? _Elizabeth clenched her suddenly very clammy hands. "Ah, Doc... how about you take a rest first? You look... peaky. Yes, peaky." She nodded persuasively. "Sit down, let me look at you, darling." _I haven't had to act this badly since high school drama. Oy vey. _

"Well, Kate, if you insist. Cheeky creature." Doc stretched out comfortably on the bed, jerking lightly through his arms and fingers. "Proceed, if you must."

"Of course, Doc." Elizabeth carefully inserted a digital thermometre into Doc's mouth. "Just don't talk for a minute." She pulled her sleeve up and rested two fingers gently over his carotid artery. "One.. ten.. eighteen.. twenty-two... thirty-six. Times four.. One-forty-four." _Buggery. _The thermometre cheeped efficiently. "One hundred three point six... " she swore under her breath. "Don't move, Dr Holliday. Do. Not. Move." Elizabeth reached the door in two steps and stuck her head out toward the nurses' station. "Elena."

Elena Cardenas glanced up from an intimidating slew of paperwork. "Elizabeth." She raised a graceful black eyebrow curiously. "You look like you've seen a ghost. Is something the matter?"

"It's Holliday. He's disconnected his IVs and exhibits delusions, irritability, tachycardia, hyperthermia, dilated pupils, and tremor. I haven't checked his BPs but I think he's going into DTs." Elizabeth clutched the doorpost. "Page whatever doctor's on duty, please."

Elena's eyes showed white all around the irises. "I'm on it." She snatched up the telephone and calmly pressed three buttons. "Dr Nehrvati? This is Elena Cardenas in Med-Surg. I'm wonderful, thank you. We have a patient going into delirium tremens. Name? John Holliday. Yes, the isolation case. Splendid." She slammed down the receiver. "Elizabeth, Dr Nehrvati will be up here in two minutes." She scuttled around the counter, grabbing a mask from a drawer and her stethoscope to prevent it falling off. "We should restart the IVs."

"Well, yes. When Nehrvati gets up here. Come on." Elizabeth stalked back into the room, Elena following at a close clip and tying off her mask. Yanking gloves from a wall-mounted container, Elena asked, "Do you have any idea when he did it?"

"Disconnected? He said about eleven o'clock. How the hell day shift didn't notice, I don't know."

Holliday had sprawled sideways across the bed, still fully clothed and sweating streams. Every few seconds, his arms and legs jerked convulsively, as though he had had a sudden chill. Elizabeth dragged the IV pole over. "Dr Holliday?" She knelt and patted his cheek firmly. "Dr Holliday! Can you hear me?" Elena tightened the cuff of a sphygmomanometre around Doc's left biceps and held her stethoscope to his elbow. She inflated it quickly as Elizabeth continued her attempts to get Holliday's attention. "Dr Holliday!"

He mumbled faintly, raising one hand to cover his eyes. Elizabeth nodded. "I think he's in there..." She swatted him again. "John Holliday! Can you hear me?" Elizabeth searched her pockets for a penlight and shined it into Doc's eyes. "Pupils are still fully dilated. His pulse was 144 earlier, fever 103.6." She slammed a drawer open, riffled around, and extracted a sterile paper packet, stripping the wrapping away as she jammed the needle into Doc's radial vein. "Shit, I think he's seizing. This is like trying to stab an angry porcupine." Elizabeth re-connected the half-empty bag of glucose solution to the cannula.

Elena nodded gravely. "He's having myoclonic seizures. Dr Nehrvati!" She turned to an elegantly tall, slender East Indian man who had just entered the room. "The patient's having myoclonic seizures. Miss Dooley reported a pulse of 144 and fever of 103.6. I've just taken his blood pressure, it's 160 over 100. Patient was delusional, irritable, tachy, hyperthermic, and had dilated pupils and a tremor. He's semi-conscious." She let the pressure out of the cuff.

Nehrvati stooped over Holliday. "Did he disconnect the IVs?"

"Ah. Yes. Apparently it was around eleven o'clock this morning. We've been reconnecting them."

"Good. Delirium tremens for sure, from what you've both described. Let's get some more D-50 through, K plus, thiamine, diazepam 10mg every fifteen minutes until he's sedated." Nehrvati popped his knuckles, exiting the room in two strides.

_To be continued - sorry to disappoint._

EmiliosLoofah: Yes, I do feel special :P Thanks for the reviews.

SassyMorg: Thank you :) Update, as requested.


	5. Chapter 4

_A/N: As it turns out, I'm just infected with the tuberculosis bacillus, but do not have active TB, which puzzles me for reasons you can all find out in: http/ However, I still have to take antibiotics Every. Single. DAY. for nine months. Because said drugs can be hard on the liver, I also cannot have more than a spoonful of liquor per week for Nine. Bloody. MONTHS. The one time in my life when I'd love to get properly soused is the one time it would actually be harmful! I steep in irony! _

_This is the continuation of the previous chapter - expect a longer proper chapter and some content from the lovely Rambler half of the team within three weeks. _

"Condition stable," Nehrvati intoned triumphantly, turning a knob to release a whistling stream of purified oxygen into the cannula that now ran from Doc's nose into his lungs. "Dr Holliday should wake up in a few days. We can lighten up on the diazepam once his ETOH levels drop some more - I'll write the orders." Elizabeth shook her head softly. "Day shift's going to wish they were in Japan when Mrs Dahlgren gets wind of this." She nodded quickly to Elena, who silently and sombrely glided out of the room.

Nehrvati steepled his slender, rootlike fingers gravely, deeply considering the still, pale, sweaty figure upon the bed. "While we're waiting for ICU to clear a bed for Dr Holliday, I have a few questions."

"Fire freely." Elizabeth began stuffing needle wrappers and other detritus of the emergency into a plastic sack. "I have nothing to hide, as long as you're keeping to medical subjects." She bit her lip. _Damnit, it shouldn't happen this way. Get them all nice and almost ready for discharge and - wham. _

"Dr Caldwell from Emergency told me that the patient really seems to believe he's some kind of Old West gunslinger. And that he claimed to come out of Tombstone."

"That's about the size of it."

"Was a Psych consult ordered for Dr Holliday?" Nehrvati toyed with the switch of his penlight, flashing out messages in Morse code on the curtain.

"No. He was alert and oriented to identity, recent events, and time when he was brought in, and in light of his condition at that time - he suffered a pulmonary haemorrhage not long after arrival - Dr Caldwell didn't see the need."

"Sensible, sensible."

"You really seem to think so."

"I -do- think so - and now that the patient has gone into delirium tremens, Miss Cardenas shall be telling us what the situation is with ICU." Nehrvati gestured grandly at the door, where Elena stood framed, looking a bit startled and trailing a stainless steel gurney behind her.

"It's, ah, good. They have a bed open? I don't like being put in the hot seat." She blushed vividly and mumbled something indistinguishable.

Dr Nehrvati cackled, exposing paper-white teeth. "Spare yourself the embarrassment and take Dr Holliday up to ICU, Elena."

"It's done." Still a rather appetising shade of crimson, which clashed intriguingly with her lavender scrubs, Elena manoeuvred the clunky apparatus to the side of Doc's bed. "This is going to take both of us, Liz. I'll push the gurney and you get the IV pole and oxygen cart."

Dr Nehrvati slipped his arms under Doc's midsection, barely stirring the unconscious man. Elizabeth and Elena automatically took up the weight of Doc's shoulders and legs, easing him across to the stark gurney with little trouble. "He's so _light," _ Elena muttered. "What was his weight on admission?"

"Sixty-two kilograms, if I remember right." Elizabeth wrenched the gurney's brake knobs. "Throw the blanket on, let's go." She sidestepped the mess of tubing gingerly, skilfully manoeuvring the cart and pole to Doc's head. His eyes, she saw, were halfway open, exposing a disquieting sliver of blue iris. Frankly, he looked dead; if it wasn't for the pulse visibly hammering in his neck, she would have been tempted to pronounce him. "Let's go, Elena."

"We can't."

"What do you mean we can't."

"I mean that the doorway is blocked."

"_Is _ it?" Elizabeth wrenched her eyes from the miasma of rubber tubes to the forlornly terrified figure between the gurney and the hallway. "Jean! What on earth are you doing here?"

The bony scholastic gestured to the supine and diaphoretic Doc Holliday with a manila envelope. "Is he - did you - is he dead!" The belly of a dead trout couldn't have matched Jean Bruster's face for sickened pallour at that moment. Neither could the dead fish itself have matched Jean for sheer flop-bodiedness as she fainted cold to the carpeting.

_Many thanks to Wobble and Sassymorg for their reviews and kind words. EmiliosLoofah, I believe I replied to you using the PM service. Forgive me if I'm mistaken. _


	6. Chapter 5

Out of Time

Chapter Five

Nehrvati snapped a small paper capsule under Jean's nose, jerking her into the cold clear consciousness of a hospital corridor. Her initial reaction being to get up, she performed half a sit-up directly into the ammonia unpleasantness of the smelling salt, and slammed her head painfully back into the piebald linoleum.

"Christ," she slurred. "Christ on toast, what in the name of all unholiness was that?"

Nehrvati smirked. "Leftovers from a Guiac test."

"In a language I understand?"

"A screening to check for occult blood in stool."

"Augh! You're—wait…I smell stool, but it's bovine," said Jean, narrow-eyed. Nehrvati stood up smugly.

"If you're all right now, we rather need to transfer our patient to the ICU," he said.

"What, Holliday? What's wrong with him? He's not dead, is he?" asked Jean, attempting to pump for information. Nehrvati shooed her to the side of the door.

"If he were dead, we wouldn't be in a hurry," he said, beckoning the two nurses and the gurney containing the recumbent and deathly pale Doc through the door. Jean blinked and managed to look very foiled.

"I'll… just wait here then," she murmured to Elizabeth, who mouthed 'What the hell?' at Jean as she passed. Now alone in the corridor, Jean picked up her manila envelope and tucked it under her arm, preparing to wait for her friend's return.

"So what the hell are you doing here, anyway?" Elizabeth bowled down the corridor, scribbling something on a chart as she walked. She tossed the folder into a basket on the counter of the nurses' station and leaned on her elbow, scrutinizing the pale and pensive-looking Jean, who had occupied a lonely office chair.

"I was aiming to prove to you, _hopefully _once and for all, that Doc Holliday – your Holliday, the man you just took to the ICU – really is Doc Holliday. That is, the Doc Holliday who was born in Griffin, Georgia, on –" Jean riffled a paper from the envelope and consulted it. "- August fourteenth, 1851, and who died in Glenwood, Colorado, on November eighth, 1887."

"Jean…"

"You see, I have these photographs – "

"Jean, you've lost your mind. Whatever your current scheme is, it's bound to be absolutely bloody nonsensical. Who are the photos of, anyway? Some obscure cousins of your great-aunt's high school sweetheart?" Elizabeth raised a surprisingly snarky eyebrow. Jean's own lofted in response.

"Calm down. You tell me what on earth is wrong with Holliday, and I'll fill you in on the complete details of my cockamamie plan."

"Fine. I guess I have a minute." Elizabeth slumped into the station and pulled up a chair of her own. "Jean, do you know what DTs are?"

"Sounds like a brand of skateboard shoes, but those are DCs. No, I don't know."

"The full name is delirium tremens – sailors used to call it the three fathom shakes. Basically, seizures, delusions, hallucinations– "

"Yes, yes, I know what delirium tremens are. Give me a little credit here, just because I can't comprehend your silly acronyms doesn't mean I can't take the full term back to the Latin," snapped Jean. "I know what usually precedes them; Drake Sainsbury of Alpha Theta Pi's infamous Exams Marathons come to mind… but what exactly is causing it in Doc?"

Elizabeth leaned back and stretched. "Ethanol alcohol – what one usually drinks – deprives the body of some rather essential nutrients. Vitamin B6, thiamin, niacin, et cetera. Dr Holliday is evidently a highly skilled alcoholic, and the antituberculars we have him on don't really help with the nutrient deprivation. Basically, his body has come to rely upon the ethanol instead of the nutrients, so when his ethanol levels start to come down, and there's nothing to replace it, bad things happen."

"Why weren't you giving him the nutrients? I mean, this is a hospital, one would think…"

Elizabeth shook her head dryly. "We were giving them to him by IV, and everything was peachy. He pulled his IVs out around eleven o'clock this morning, and nobody knew until I came on shift and found him with established delusions. He thought I was somebody called Kate, and that this was a hotel – all sorts of nonsense. I couldn't make anything of it."

Jean leapt up in a credible imitation of a breaching whale. "I can make something of it. Something very important, I think."

"Oh really now." Elizabeth sighed and tightened her ponytail. "I'm dying to hear it."

"John Henry Holliday was closely involved with a woman called Mary Katherine Harony for the last ten years of his life – she was variously known as Kate Elder, Kate Fisher, Kate Cummings, or Big Nose Kate." Jean gingerly slid a computer printout of a daguerreotype photograph from the manila envelope. Two solemn-faced young women in heavily frilled bonnets and dark mantles stared in opposite directions, neither one into the camera itself. "The girl sitting down, in the plaid, that's Big Nose Kate when she was about seventeen years old."

Elizabeth rubbed her nose, considering. "How well known was Kate, exactly?"

"Well, in what sense?" Jean scratched her head and yawned. "In the boomtowns of the West, or-" She yawned again. "Excuse me. In the boom towns or today?"

"Mmm. First tell me two things: did you sleep last night, and have you eaten today?"

Jean fidgeted and smiled sheepishly. "I'm afraid my nocturnal hours were devoted to research, and as for the other… well, how often do I get hungry anyway? Once a week? Stop that!" She frantically smacked the back of Elizabeth, who was engaged in pounding her head vigorously against the countertop.

"What- smack -Do- smack -you- smack -expect, if you insist upon persisting in your consummately HORRIBLE health habits? I meant today, anyway. What are the chances that your average Wild West freak could pick Big Nose Kate out of a lineup?"

"Oh, eh… well, not very big. She's not a terribly well-known figure of the period, and this isn't how she's usually depicted. Even on Google, one would have to know what one was looking for, and even then—" Jean broke off, seeing Elizabeth's dry look.

"So that's why you stayed up all night? I despair of you," sighed the nurse.

"That wasn't all I stayed up for," protested Jean, fumbling through her papers again. She produced four more printouts of daguerreotypes, three of men, and one of a woman. "See, I found James Earp, one of the elder Earp brothers, James Behan, the sheriff of Tombstone with whom Wyatt Earp found himself at political odds, and Mattie Blaylock, Wyatt Earp's wife," she said, pointing first to a portrait of a man with an intense gaze and an impressive mustache, then at a balding man with a slightly less impressive mustache, and finally at a prettily vague young woman with curled hair.

"And who's that? Looks familiar," asked Elizabeth, intrigued in spite of herself, pointing to the fourth printout, of a decently handsome blond young man, with just the barest hint of a mustache on his lip. Jean grinned toothily.

"Don't you recognize him? That's young Doc Holliday, before he went out west," she said. Elizabeth blinked and peered closer.

"I'll be damned," she murmured. "It does look like him, sort of."

"I didn't bring the later pictures, for fear you might have a heart attack from suspended disbelief," smirked Jean. "This was taken about eight years before we got ahold of him—eight, or 133, whichever."

"Well, that is—interesting," said Elizabeth. She started, as though waking up, and checked her watch. "Jean, it's lunchtime."

"And your point being…?" asked Jean idly. "I'm not done converting you, unbeliever!"

"My point being you haven't slept or eaten since god-knows-when and what should have been a manageable shock caused you to collapse!" exclaimed Elizabeth fiercely. "You aren't speaking again until you've eaten."

"Oh eh…?" said Jean.

Elizabeth slammed open a drawer, rummaged, and brandished a roll of surgical tape. "Oh eh, you betcha. Back in Osh-kosh, we call dis here stuff silk tape – most tenacious adhesive, apart from DermaBond, available on the premises," she said, mocking a Wisconsin accent. "Now come on."

Jean obediently wandered after Elizabeth's retreating back. _How do you get into an ICU? _She mused. Half-formed ideas for harebrained ruses floated through her head.

"Sho," Jean said thickly, prodding a plate of ambiguous spaghetti with a plastic fork, "I have eaten, Nursh Ratched, sho may I shpeek?" She swallowed.

"I'll consider it." Elizabeth forked a meatball from Jean's plate and was rewarded with an offended glare. "Kindly disclose your harebrained scheme." She fixed Jean with a dry gaze worthy of a staring contest. "Whaaat? You weren't going to eat it."

"Neither were you. It's Friday." Jean grinned evilly. "Naughty Elizabeth."

"For the love of Bob, that's right." Elizabeth returned the meatball hastily. "Now, those photographs..."

"Ah yes." Jean took another forkful of spaghetti. "I know that I got you hooked on _Tombstone_, my dear, but perchance had you ever heard of James Earp?"

"No..." Elizabeth chewed her straw idly. "Have you ever heard of hypoxanaxemia?"

"Quiet, you." Jean slid a photograph out of the manila envelope. "Would you have known that one of these girls was Big Nose Kate if I hadn't told you?"

"No. Do I want to know where this is going?"

"Yes, you do. I have an envelope full of verified photographs of obscure people whom Doc Holliday would nonetheless have had close interaction with. Big Nose Kate was his off-and-on common-law wife. James Earp was the oldest brother of Wyatt Earp. Mattie Blaylock was Wyatt's common-law wife, and John Behan was the sheriff of Cochise County in the year prior to the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Doc would have seen James Earp and John Behan on a semi-regular basis at least, and almost daily seen Kate and Mattie. Do you see what I'm driving at?"

"You, in your airheaded academic wisdom, have concluded that nobody save the real genuine 24-karat Doc Holliday should be able to recognise any of those people. On the surface, Jean, it's not a _bad _plan..." Elizabeth sighed and swigged at her Cherry Coke. "There is a tiny flaw."

Jean folded her plate in half, raising an eyebrow. "Let me guess – there's some irrevocable logistical flaw. Remind me again, because I'm not seeing it..?"

Elizabeth leaned forward. "Jean, the hospital has a strict policy in regards to the ICU. No visitors are allowed, except immediately family, and for no longer than thirty minutes at a time."

"Oh, that's simple." Jean briskly swept all the detritus of her meal onto a tray. "I'll just tell the nurse I'm his sister or something."

"Can you prove that with a birth certificate?" Elizabeth looked at Jean sobrely. "Jean, you'll just have to wait until Dr Holliday's released back to the floor."

"Birth certificate! What? _Whose?"_

"Both... yours and his.. and photo ID. For you, I mean. I know it's extremely strict: something to do with a stabbing over a drug deal a few years ago. Don't worry about it, please."

Jean fumed dangerously. "You don't understand. I have to get in there by _tomorrow. Nota bene, stulissimus, _this is imperative." She popped her knuckles anxiously. "Is there any way you can get me in there?" The cogs of her mind worked almost visibly behind her almost-invisible eyebrows.

"I could stab you, shoot you full of insulin, beat you with the ugly stick... No. There is absolutely no way I could smuggle you into the ICU without losing my job and very likely my licence by doing so." Elizabeth spread her hands in supplication. "I'm really sorry, Jean, but there's nothing either of us can do but wait. Listen to me -"

But Jean had already left the table, striding briskly toward a display of brightly coloured candy bars. Elizabeth leaned sideways, trying to see what Jean had chosen, but the professor's narrow back blocked her view. She sat back, crossed her arms, and blew a strand of hair out of her face irritably, watching as Jean peeled the violently orange wrapper off whatever she had bought and ate half of what was inside before returning to the table.

Elizabeth sat up. "What did you just eat, Jean?" she inquired curiously. "I mean, obviously it was a candy bar, but why throw half away?"

Jean sat down, smirking like a Sphinx. She folded her gently jittering hands on the table. "It was a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Calm down, Elizabeth." The nurse had gone quite white and appeared to have received a strong electrical jolt.

"Calm down?" Speaking rapidly, Elizabeth whispered furiously across the table. "I'm not going to ask if you are insane, Jean, because you have to be! A Reese's Peanut Butter Cup? Jean, what the hell are you trying to do? Jean... you're allergic to peanuts."

Jean smiled wanly, red patches appearing on her throat. "I know." She breathed wheezily. "It won't be long now."

Elizabeth vaulted around the table. "Lay down. I mean it. I don't want you to hit something when you faint." She lowered Jean gently to the floor, assessing the bony woman's pulse on the way down. "Jean, you're going into anaphylactic shock. Just breathe.. please, breathe. Do you have your EpiPen with you?" Dr Caldwell ran over and crouched beside Elizabeth.

"Elizabeth. I was eating lunch across the room. What's going on here?" His slightly protruberant eyes flicked about, taking in the scene. Jean lay still and flat on the floor, rasping shallowly and puffing about the face.

"She – Jean- is allergic to peanuts... she ate a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup by mistake. She's already breaking out into urticaria and I think her throat is constricting. Her pulse is rapid." Elizabeth wiped her eyes hastily. _Goddamit, Jean, you flaming idiot. _

Dr Caldwell nodded. "Angioedema's starting to set in and her face is flushed." He swatted Jean's cheeks lightly, then lifted her eyelid. "She's unconscious. Jim!" he shouted to a male nurse hovering nearby. "Get a gurney."

Elizabeth retreated, swearing softly to herself and weeping silently. _Jean Bruster, _she thought, _if you come out of this unscathed, so help me God, I will give you fifty lashes with a Foley catheter. _ She swore once more, and followed after the gurney bearing the unconscious and impulsive Jean Bruster.

_A/N: _

_Well, well, what have we here? An update! See, now y'all will **have** to read the next chapter, to see what happens to Jean as well as Doc. If this makes me evil... I think I enjoy being bad. _

_ Sponge Monkey, Fruit Basket, and Coffee Addict: I will assume that you're the same person. Thanks for the reviews, and I hope this is up to expectations._

_Ardendaeas: bows deeply Thank you so much for your review! I'm extremely flattered :-)_

_GateBuilder05: Here's the update! There isn't much Doc at all in this chapter, but there's definite hopes for the next. About the possibility of a romance fic.. the official response is a sphinx-like smirk. Unofficially, I don't know. We'll see what course the characters (they control us!) want to take. Besides, you know I couldn't do a tasteless or conventional romance fic! _

_Ilpadrino123: I do hope that just over a month wasn't "too long." Various difficulties in the co-writers getting together delayed the finishing and uploading of this chapter. Thank you for the review! _

_ EmiliosLoofah: One of my loyal review squad! I was rather fond of the dead-fish imagery myself. Thank you so much for the review; I'm awaiting your analysis of this chapter with bated breath :-P _

_Sassymorg: Glad you like my poor story. I confess that it's at least partially an excuse to abuse my characters. _

Phew.. I think I replied to everybody. Next time, Rambler is going to have to do the review replies. I love you all, but I never know quite what to say! Nevertheless, please keep the reviews coming. Plants are photosynthetic, and I, as a feedback whore, am definitely reviewsynthetic.


	7. Chapter 6

"She did _what?_" Lonnie, the overweight and brassy-haired ER secretary, gaped at Elizabeth. "Is she looney?"

Elizabeth wiped at her eyes, clutching a styrofoam cup half-full of black coffee. "I think she is, to be perfectly honest. Dr Caldwell says she'll wake up in a few days, and will be transferred to my floor, but for now she's sedated and on a vent and - oooh," she muttered, flustered, "I can't believe she would do something like that just to get at him. Pah." She pushed an errant section of hair away from her face and slouched deeper into her chair.

Lonnie raised an eyebrow. "Get at who, honey? You aren't making a lot of sense here." She levered herself from a low, dilapidated computer chair with a sigh and meandered eight feet - across her entire office - to the coffee maker.

"It's a long, sordid, and confusing story."

"It's a slow night, and I'm ahead on my filing."

"Fine. Where do I start? It was a dark and stormy night," Elizabeth began, "except that it wasn't really storming. On the 26th of October, I was floating in the ER because Jenny Sturmond was out with cellulitis. An agency nurse filled my spot up on Med-Surg, but that's irrelevant. We got a GSW by squad, Code Three, cyanotic and haemoptic. Dr Caldwell was on the case.

"The GSW turned out to be superficial, but the patient suffered another haemoptysis soon after arriving. Dr Caldwell diagnosed advanced pulmonary tuberculosis, performed a bronchoscopy, ordered a Mantoux test, and sent the patient off to x-ray."

"I remember," Lonnie nodded. "His name is Holliday."

"Yes, it is. That wouldn't be so very strange, but he said his name is John Henry Holliday, refers to himself as Doc, claims to be a dentist, and dresses like something out of Back to the Future, part 3. Jean has - a theory, if you can call it that. She believes that Dr Holliday may in fact be the actual Doc Holliday, the one from the OK Corral."

"So what's that got to do with her deliberately putting herself into anaphylactic shock?" The fluorescent lights flickered, casting Lonnie and Elizabeth into alternating light and shadow. Elizabeth glanced at the ceiling uneasily.

"I'm getting to that. Oy vey, I wish those lights wouldn't do that. I was in a theatre production my junior year of high school, and while we were moving a piece of scenery, we hit two fluorescent tubes. They shattered all over the place and we were all combing glass from our hair for an hour. Anyway.

"Jean was going to show Dr Holliday a series of photographs, pictures of obscure Old West figures that Doc Holliday - the real one - would have known fairly well. She'd already figured out that he speaks Latin... Jean teaches Latin and I let her gibber at Dr Holliday through the door of his room. She said something about his pronunciation being old-fashioned. I don't know. " Elizabeth crossed her knees, jumping slightly as a not-so-very heavy object slid onto the floor with a crackle. She swooped down and plucked up the manila envelope. "I guess I still have the pictures. Who were they again..? Big Nose Kate, James Earp, John something, Mattie something who was Wyatt Earp's wife, and Doc Holliday before he went out West."

"So she figured that if Dr Holliday was the real Doc Holliday, he would know who those people were in a heartbeat?"

"More or less."

"But why did she eat the Reese's?"

"Ah. That. Well... a slight crimp was put in her plans when Dr Holliday pulled his IVs and went into delirium tremens. We sent him off to ICU. Jean arrived just in time to see him carted off, and she believes wholeheartedly that she must show him the photographs by tomorrow, or bad things will happen. Something like that."

The secretary eased back into her chair with all the grace of a grizzly bear climbing a tree. "Why tomorrow?"

Elizabeth leaned forward, resting her elbows on her thighs. "Tomorrow is the day that Doc Holliday died in 1887. I think that Jean thinks that if Dr Holliday is the genuine article, he will go poof or suchlike."

"But what do you think, Elizabeth? It all sounds awfully crazy to me... you sure Jean isn't a fruit?"

The nurse shrugged, biting her lower lip with apparent relish. She picked at an imaginary spot on her blue scrubs. "I don't know. Jean - she tends to be fairly logical, but when we were kids, like 13 or 14, she'd invented a whole other world inhabited by cat-people. I guess she can be... fanciful? I know I don't believe in ghosts, at least not ghosts that are lost souls wandering the earth because of unfinished business. I don't think they're souls from Purgatory either. Maybe ghosts are imprints of past events that were so emotionally charged that they changed the actual physical makeup of the location. But Dr Holliday isn't a ghost - I don't think I could start an IV on a ghost - so I don't know what to think."

Lonnie patted Elizabeth's knee sympathetically. "You know, my husband is a real Wild West freak. He goes to Tombstone a few times a decade to do re-enactments with his friends. He's read about every book there is about everybody who was involved with the OK Corral fight, and rehashed it all for me over dinner at one time or another in the past twenty-five years. Let's just say that Doc Holliday didn't have a lot of friends. His mother died when he was just a kid, his father shipped him up North for dental school a couple of years later, and a couple years after _that, _he got TB and went out West. People didn't like him much because he was the last word in a good poker player. He fought with Big Nose Kate all the time, and she would just as soon go away for months at a time as stay with him. About the only friend he had was Wyatt Earp, but they fought, or so my husband says, not long after the gunfight, and never spoke again."

"How awful," Elizabeth mumbled, knocking back a slug of coffee. "Never again, at all?"

"Never. Wyatt Earp didn't even know Doc had died until something like ten years afterward. Big Nose Kate was with him for the last month or so."

"That's all very sad, Lonnie, but what exactly has it all to do with Dr Holliday and Jean? What's it got to do with me?" Elizabeth raised her eyebrows, giving them the look of two black caterpillars floating in a bowl of milk.

Lonnie shrugged, picked up a battered pencil from her desk, and began chipping bits of paint off with her thumbnail. "I'm a sentimental old nut, you know. I order those Dreamsicle figurines from catalogues and I watched _Touched by an Angel _religiously until they pulled it off the air. I have three old, ratty cats at home whom I will let sleep in my bed. Do you catch my drift yet?"

Elizabeth smirked slightly. "I have an aunt who's just like you. She had the slightly obnoxious habit of thinking that everything could be solved by a good hug... even when you're so pissed off that you'd rather claw somebody's ears off." She examined one sneaker for scuffs. "But no, I don't know what you mean... are you saying that, had Doc Holliday possessed a few Dreamsicle figurines and watched _Touched by an Angel _a bit more often than _never in his lifetime, _or for about a hundred years afterward, he might not have been so unhappy?" An unbidden mental image of Dr Holliday cuddling a Care-Bear plushie crossed Elizabeth's mind, and she almost tumbled out of her chair.

"That's the cynic's version and you know it. Elizabeth dear, what I am trying to get at is that Doc Holliday had such a waspish temper as a whatsit, a defence mechanism. If somebody had liked him for himself, and not just stayed away from him because he was so good with a pistol, maybe he wouldn't have been quite so nasty. Maybe he would have been happier."

Elizabeth shrugged. "I can see what you're saying, but there's one enormous, over-reaching, insurmountable flaw to your gospel, Lonnie. That man upstairs is not Doc Holliday. He could not _possibly _be Doc Holliday. Doc Holliday _died _almost 120 years ago! He would be nearly 160 years old now. Time travel is a logical impossibility. I couldn't be directly kind to Doc Holliday any more than I could be directly kind to that pencil you're mutilating. There's just no way I could reach into the past that far - heck, I can't fix mistakes I made _yesterday_ - to fix Doc Holliday." She stared very intently at Lonnie, who gazed back benignly, with a slight and mysterious smile.

"What's that you have around your neck?"

"What, this?" Elizabeth dangled a medal's chain over her finger. "It's a St Therese medal... she was a French nun who died of TB in 1897. Canonised in 1925 if I'm remembering correctly. I took her as my patron when I was confirmed, when I was 16. Why?"

"So you're Catholic?"

"Last time I checked..." Elizabeth raised her eyebrow.

Lonnie grinned. "To put it shortly, you believe that bread and wine can be turned into God, and you believe that God allows the Virgin Mary to visit people?"

"What's so strange about that? 1 billion people believe in both of those."

"But why does it happen? Why does God allow either of those?"

Elizabeth crossed her arms and laughed in disbelief. "What's with the third degree, Lonnie? God's almighty... He can do whatever He wants."

"Then why, according to you, can He not allow one person to jump 120 years?"

Gaping a bit like a goldfish, Elizabeth thought for a moment. "I suppose," she said carefully, "that there is absolutely no reason why God couldn't do that."

"No reason whatsoever." Lonnie nodded emphatically. "Take those photographs. Go up to ICU - shush! They'll let you in. Holliday was your patient, and you're off work for today because of what happened to Jean. Tell him what Jean knows... and show him those photographs."

Elizabeth stared at the elevator doors, ignoring the soft _ping _that announced itself every time another floor was passed. _Fourth floor: _ICU, CCU, Telemetry. The doors opened silently, and she sidled out around an incoming cluster of nurses, doctors, plastic tubes, and an old man on a gurney. "Hi, Liz!" one called. She waved in acknowledgment and wandered off toward the nurses' station that marked the boundary between ICU and the rest of the fourth floor.

"Can I help you?" A grey-haired nurse looked up swiftly from a thick and densely written patient chart, blinking myopically at Elizabeth through heavy glasses.

"Yes, ma'am," Elizabeth replied, attempting not to stare at the old-fashioned cap perched like a frozen seagull on the other woman's head. "I - I'm Elizabeth Dooley. I'm an RN on Med-Surg... I would like to visit one of my patients who was transferred here earlier this afternoon. His name is John Holliday... admitting diagnosis pulmonary TB, complicated this afternoon by ethanol DTs. Oh.. and a friend of mine. She went into anaphylactic shock about two hours ago. Her name is Jean Bruster; has she been admitted yet?" Fighting the urge to curtsey, she unclipped her ID badge and proffered it.

The older nurse examined it, and then gave it back, remarking, "That's all in order. I'm Maureen Ashton, by the way. Charge nurse in ICU." She smiled. "I know... the cap and this," she gestured to her stiff white dress and shoes "are a bit intimidating. That's the effect I intended," she continued, pushing back her chair and motioning to Elizabeth to follow her. "If somebody doesn't have legitimate business in the ICU, they're less likely to pursue it if I look like I may bite."

Elizabeth snickered. "It definitely worked on me. My mother would like you; she thinks I look like I'm wearing pyjamas to work."

"I can't say I disagree, but I'm old-fashioned. I've been a nurse for thirty-five years and never given up white dresses and caps. Now, as for Mr Holliday and Ms Bruster... " Maureen tapped a few words into a computer. "Mr Holliday is in stable condition. His last sputum cultures failed to yield any live organisms, so he's out of isolation. However, he's still sedated, and will be transferred to the CCU tomorrow. Ms Bruster," she trailed off, typing slowly, "'Stable but serious.' She is sedated and on a vent for now, to be re-evaluated tomorrow."

"I see," Elizabeth said slowly, feeling her heart constrict. "How long has she been up here?"

"I was just finishing her admitting paperwork when you walked up, so about fifteen minutes." Maureen paused before a sliding glass door, which opened of its own accord after a moment. "I can allow you ten minutes with Mr Holliday and five with Ms Bruster, okay? Mr Holliday's at the end there, by the window. I'll come get you when your time with him is up."

"That's fine," Elizabeth said, feeling prickles of uneasy anticipation crawl down her spine. "Thank you so much, Maureen."

The door shut with faint sibilance behind Elizabeth, sealing her into the 75-degree hush of the ICU. Nobody spoke; the ICU nurses assessed patients in the silence of a library, tempered only by the filmy _whosssh _of ventilators, the regular _beep _of heart monitors, and, once in a while, an IV pump or pulse oximetre's alarm.

Doc Holliday lay in the late afternoon light, utterly still and evidently, to Elizabeth's unsurprised eye, quite naked under the lightweight blankets. Each prominently boned wrist had been gently lashed to a side-rail with strips of gauze; great lengths of silicon tubing were securely taped into his veins. His wiry quiff of ash-blonde hair was madly askew, appearing to glitter as droplets of perspiration caught the watery sunlight. Elizabeth pulled a violently orange plastic chair to the bed, and sat down, opening the envelope.

"It's Elizabeth Dooley, Dr Holliday," she ventured, feeling furiously silly. "I know you can't hear me, at least not consciously. My friend Jean... she did something stupid to get to see you, so she can't right now. She wanted to, though. I'm going to ask you what she wanted to ask you... yeah." She slid the first photograph out, rummaging her brain to recall the sitter's name. "Dr Holliday, did you know.. Mary Katherine Harony?"

There was no response; Doc continued in equanimitous slumber.

"Hm. Kate... Fisher?"

Did that finger twitch? "Kate Fisher, Dr Holliday?" Yes, it definitely did. Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "How about Kate Elder?"

There it was again. _Jean, I'm not giving in yet. _

"Kate Cummings?"

Holliday's eyes scrumpled, just enough to be easily seen. Elizabeth's eyes widened.

"What about James Earp? John Behan?"

Doc's head flopped over toward Elizabeth, but he uttered no sound. Glancing quickly around, Elizabeth patted his cheek swiftly. "You can hear me, Dr Holliday?" _Sedated? _She checked the IV labels. _Thiamine, pyridoxine... diazepam. _And no wonder he could hear her, somewhat; the sedation must be only light enough to keep Holliday groggy and un-vocal. The piggyback bag of Valium had run through, probably some time before, Elizabeth noted, and its effects were wearing off.

"Mattie Blaylock? Did you know Mattie Blaylock?" Doc, she was sure, was mouthing something in response. Elizabeth bent her ear to his dry and quivering mouth.

"I hate... that... goddamned... dope fiend..." came the answer, barely audible as an articulate stream of air. Jean's voice came into Elizabeth's head.

_"Mattie was quite addicted to laudanum - headaches, or something. She drove Wyatt Earp absolutely nuts, and because Doc was devoted to Wyatt, it drove him bananas as well..." _

Heart and brain now rattling along at a speed close to "Flight of the Bumblebee," Elizabeth sat back, floored. Holliday had responded to every name in Jean's envelope, but the stimulus of Elizabeth's voice could, she thought, have startled him out of Valium sleep. "Just one more question, Dr Holliday," Elizabeth said quietly. She leaned forward, and murmured into Doc's ear. "What happened... September the sixteenth, eighteen sixty-six?"

Delayed and distorted by the weight of the sedatives, Doc's sandy eyebrows curled together, his mouth turning down at the corners in a mask of deep and frustrated sorrow. _"Mama... " _he mumbled drunkenly.

Electrified, Elizabeth bit her knuckles to stifle a yelp. _Oh dear. _"This is impossible," she muttered. "There's no way you can be Doc Holliday... but you must be... oh dear."

"Why shouldn't he be Holliday? That's his name, isn't it?" Maureen stood over Elizabeth's shoulder, tapping her wristwatch. "I'm sorry to disturb you," she whispered, "but your ten minutes are up."

"It's okay, it's okay," Elizabeth hissed. "Dr Holliday's sedation is beginning to wear off."

"What?" Maureen held the IV bag up to the light. "This had to have run through hours ago, but I never heard the alarm." She set her hands upon her hips and shook her head. "Lousy thing."

"Peculiar. Where may I find Jean Bruster?" Elizabeth asked, sealing the envelope.

"She's in the other room, through that sliding door _there." _Maureen pointed.

"Thank you... and thanks for letting me see Mr Holliday." Elizabeth tiptoed away, panicking in one very small hidden corner of her mind.

Jean was so nauseatingly pale, Elizabeth thought, crossing herself. Five years of constant exposure to IVs and ventilators was nowhere near enough to prepare her for the sight of Jean, whom she knew and loved like a twin sister, with IVs taped to each hand, an endotracheal tube dragging down one corner of her mouth, and a catheter emerging from somewhere beneath the blankets. "You bloody ignoramus," she told Jean, stroking the professor's hand gently. "I hope you're happy with yourself." Elizabeth sighed. "I asked him, Jean. I asked Mr Holliday about every photograph in the envelope. He responded to all those names... and he knew what happened on September sixteenth, eighteen sixty-six.

"I believe you, Jean... I feel really silly for believing in something this far-fetched, but I do. That man is the real Doc Holliday from Tombstone, Arizona... but what do we do with him?"

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_A/N: Whooooosh! I cranked this out in three days after receiving some heartfelt reviews requesting the continuing of the story. Rambler has, unfortunately, lost interest in it, but reading about Doc Holliday's death is enough to make _me _teary-eyed, so expect more story in future! _

_**Gatebuilder05 / Fruitbasket: **I reconsidered immediately after receiving your review... so here's a shiny new chapter, the first of the all-Gaelige chapters. I remember well the horrors of school... I hope this new chapter helps :P _

_**Sassymorg: **I agree that this story gets a comparative lot of interest, but it was a proportion thing. The last chapter was six typewritten pages, and getting only three reviews (one of which was a joke from a friend) was dis-enheartening. I am continuing under my own steam, as previously stated. _

_**Rosemarie-ouihisama: **You never reviewed that I can remember! I had absolutely no idea that you were reading this story! OMG I love it when people love my work! happy dance _

_**Danielle: **Thank you. I hope you read the new chapter. _

_**Ilpadrino123: **I'll continue, don't worry. Writing actually goes faster without having to consult another person about plot details. I do hope you enjoy this chapter. Unfortunately, I can't see a book of any of my work coming out in the near future... I tend to be very secretive about anything but my fanfiction. It's delightful to know that my work entertains you. _

_Thanks once more to everybody who reviewed! See you next time! _


	8. Chapter 7

"Chinese food," Jean said briskly. "We've simply got to take Doc out for Chinese. How can anybody go their entire life without tasting a barbecued pork bun? It's practically inhuman!" She clapped her hands excitedly, nearly falling headfirst between the bed and nightstand. Elizabeth sat up in alarm.

"Be careful. You'll be out of here in less than an hour, unless you do something stupid. Anyway," she went on, tapping her nose with a pencil, "is Chinese food that essential of a life experience?"

"YES!"

"You're the doctor." Elizabeth scrawled _Chinese Food _ in her careful, archaic script. "Speaking of doctors, how are you feeling?" It had been five days since Jean had put herself in critical condition, after an extremely successful bid to circumvent the strict visitation rules of the hospital's intensive care unit. Doc Holliday had returned the next day, followed by Jean two days later.

"Me? I'm sparkly." Jean shrugged. "My throat's kind of sore from that Shop-Vac you put me on, but you wouldn't be letting me go if I was still half-dead."

Elizabeth cackled. "_Shop-Vac? _That's.. original? I had an old man once who referred to his genitals as "my cats..."

_"Cats? _ Was he gender-confused but polite?"

"No idea. I had to cath him one day and he started screeching 'My _cats!! _ What are you doing to _my cats?!'" _Elizabeth smirked. "Darn it! I'm at work, on my day off, and I swear, I feel naked." She tugged at her ankle-length skirt and crossed her legs. "What about... films?"

Jean nodded enthusiastically. "Which ones?"

"_Titanic?_"

"Your capacity for sadism is greater than that of Margaret Thatcher and Bill Gates - _combined." _

"Ooh, that's harsh." Elizabeth feigned a stab to the heart, rolling her eyes back until they twitched frantically. "Allright," she said, blinking rapidly, "so _Titanic _has been struck down as more an instrument of torture than a movie. Now," she said, suddenly deadly serious, "I've got to say this, okay? You're a damn fool, Jean Bruster. I don't care if you are getting out of here in ten minutes, you're stupid and I'm going to let you know it if it kills me!" Elizabeth stuffed her notepad into a pocket and scowled viciously at Jean, who blinked innocently and fluffed a plastic-encased pillow.

"Really, Liz. I don't quite see what you're getting so worked up about... It was a bit impulsive, okay, but so what?"

Elizabeth stared. "I don't believe you sometimes. You could have _died, _you could have ended up a _vegetable... _I mean, what if I hadn't been standing right there? What if the ET tube went into your gullet instead of your _windpipe? _I swear," she thundered, drawing up to her full height, eye-level with Jean's mouth, "pull something like that again and I will personally _kill you. _With my bare hands. Okay?"

"I'd like to see that," Jean smirked, "especially considering that you freeze and start hyperventilating if a spider _this big _appears." She held her thumb and forefinger a couple millimetres apart.

"Yes, I am a chicken, " Elizabeth sighed, "but you're an ignoramous."

"Who cares? You believe me now, don't you? That's Doc Holliday, and I have proved it beyond the shadow of a doubt," she pointed out, stabbing her finger at Elizabeth.

"Silly ass."

"Stuffy doormat."

"Heathen prune. I'm not done berating you, darnit. Whether or not Doc is Doc Holliday is utterly beside the point. Anyway -" the nurse sighed, plumping into the hard plastic bedside chair, "have you got all your things together?"

Jean waved her fingers at two plastic bags, abandoned in the middle of the bed. "I've been ready since 8 o'clock - and as it's now 11.30 -"

"Sorry I'm late," a flustered redheaded nurse panted as she darted into the room, stethoscope swinging. "Hi, Liz; are you Jean Bruster?"

"The same," Jean drawled. "Are you the parole board?" She accepted a clipboard from the pumpkin-haired nurse, who busied herself with a blood-pressure cuff.

"In a manner of speaking. I'm Sarah Linstead, charge nurse. I just need to get your vital signs and have you sign this liability release right _there- " _she tapped the clipboard and strapped the cuff around Jean's biceps.

"Great, a Kevorkian scarf," Jean mumbled, scribbling '_Richard M Nixon, PhD_.' "Are we done yet?"

"Almost." Nurse Linstead counted Jean's pulse out under her breath. "Dr Nehrvati will be in shortly to go over your discharge instructions."

"I'm already here," grinned the immensely tall Hindu. "Bye, Sarah - hello, Elizabeth, Miss Bruster."

"Greetings, warden. Let me guess - you're here to tell me that eating peanuts of any stripe is stupid, please don't do it again, and by the way avoid all controlled substances."

"Well, not in so many words. Avoid peanuts, carry rapid epinephrine administration device, and _never do that again. _Or I will personally help Dooley here to kill you, because my hands are stronger." He grinned evilly and picked up the clipboard, scrawling something. "You're officially free - _President Nixon?_"

"Thank Poseidon!" Jean exclaimed. "Five more minutes and I would have been re-admitted - to the psych ward!" She grabbed her bags and scurried out the door, leaving Elizabeth scrambling to keep up.

Doc muddled over his lunch, poking disinterestedly at a dish of banana pudding. "What the hell _is _a banana, anyway?" he muttered, abandoning the daisy-yellow glop in favour of an indifferently fried chicken leg. "I'll be," he said thoughtfully, noticing the wall calendar for the first time in days. "November thirteenth? That makes... three weeks. Three weeks in this damn weird place. Hmph!" He shrugged and returned to the chicken.

The place wasn't bad, he acknowledged; no, the problem was that Doc hardly knew what to make of anything. From his limited window view, he could see no horses, no wagons; in place of the dirt roads and wooden buildings to which he was accustomed lay pavement and edifices of glass or concrete, peopled by... people, but like none Doc had ever seen. _This new world is - incredible, _he thought; _they can cure consumption or fly to the moon if they wish it. _

The door scraped open; Doc craned his neck. "Oh! Miss Bruster and Miss Dooley. I'm afraid you find me not precisely _ready _to receive guests - but you are both very welcome. I have," he said direly, "been on the verge of expiring from sheer boredom."

"Sorry, Dr Holliday," Elizabeth shrugged, "but -"

"I was in a coma and Liz is germ-phobic," Jean cut in. "How the hell are you, Doc?" She bounced in place like a cocaine-tripping marmoset.

"Actually, it wasn't a coma," Elizabeth began.

"Quiet, you. Let the man speak."

"You be quiet. I'm not a germ-phobic either; I'm simply _cautious." _

Jean leered derisively. "Cautious enough to shower with Lysol?"

"If you knew what kind of germs fly around here, you'd do the same. Anyway, nobody was allowed to visit Doc until last night. He hadn't been cleared from isolation."

Doc held up a bony hand. "First, you find me astonishingly well, considering that last month I was somewhat more than half-dead. Second - why was I "isolated" in the first place? If it was for medical reasons, I beg you to recall that consumption is a purely individual malady, and cannot be passed from one person to another."

Elizabeth gaped. "I'm sorry, but I'll be doing that a lot... I tend to forget that you're, well, not exactly what I would call up-to-date with medical knowledge." She snapped her knuckles and wrists. "There are things, organisms, called bacteria - "

"I have heard of those," Doc interrupted. "Nevertheless, proceed." He stroked his moustaches pensively as the nurse explained.

"Right. Bacteria - which cause a lot of diseases, and TB - _consumption, _sorry - is one." Liz gazed at Doc, sifting through her memory. "When are you from, 1881? Next year, in _your _time at least, a German physician named Koch will discover that consumption is caused by bacteria _and _is contagious - very contagious, in the right conditions."

"Fascinating," Doc replied, while his mind went wild processing this new information. "That contradicts everything I was told at university."

"Right, well, anyway, you had to be kept away from everybody else so that nobody would catch it."

"Like how people were walled up alive during the Black Plague," Jean interjected gleefully. _"Morituri te salutant!" _

"We, who are about to die, salute thee - but I am _not_ going to die." Doc spoke so definitely that Jean quit cackling and Liz paused, open-mouthed, on the verge of another lecture. He stared hard at each in turn, scanning their faces for confirmation. "That is the truth, am I correct? My life is somehow no longer in danger from consumption."

"No, you're entirely right," said Liz. "Why do you ask, though?" _It's a cureable disease, _she thought, then mentally hit herself over the head. _Not for him, you dope. _

"Forgive me if I wax a little morbid," Doc remarked dryly, deciding once and for all to ignore lunch, "but I lived with the Reaper's scythe hanging over me for nine years. Every physician I consulted - and one was my own uncle - told me that I would die inside of a year if I remained in Georgia, and inside of two if I relocated to the West. Last October twenty-sixth, at which time I was brought here by no mechanism I pretend to understand, I had outlived their rosiest predictions by seven years." Distantly, he shook his head.

"On some serious borrowed time, eh?" Jean inquired flatly.

"You have no idea... but what I am getting at is this: I'd lived the last quarter of my life expecting to drop dead any day. For all practical purposes, I _was _dead; I didn't care what sort of trouble I got into." Doc paced to the window and drew the ugly pink curtains aside. "You cannot know what it is to live that way," he said softly, "always, always knowing that you are dying. It drives a man to insanity."

Liz glanced at Jean, who flashed a knowing look of "Shut up, I'll handle this." "So, Doc," Jean asked, "You don't mind being marooned in strange times like these?"

He thought for a moment, and shook his head. "No, I can't truly say as I do mind," he drawled, letting the curtain fall back into place.

"I have to warn you, people have gotten awfully stranger than you're used to," she cautioned, with a reproving glare at Elizabeth.

"Times may be strange, Miss Bruster, but humans were perverse in 1881, exactly as they were in 1781 and back to the dawn of time. I should know; the West has a tendency to bring out everything that is terrible and primitive in a man. At the present time, I am mostly concerned with the fact that I have no longer to torture my mind with thoughts of my impending death..." _Joy, _he mused, _is bittersweet, when none here can share it. _For the first time in weeks, he wondered what would have become of Wyatt by now - almost certainly, he was dead. Kate would be dead, too; everybody he knew was gone. _No need to concern the ladies with that maudlin nonsense just now, _he reminded himself sternly, shaking off a fog of nostalgia. "I have all the time in the world to acquaint myself with your civilisation." _If only they could have helped Mother, too. Be quiet, you pantywaist. _

Jean clapped her hands. "Doc, the instant you're granted parole, Liz and I will teach you how to paint the town _red. _Well - I'll teach you, and Liz with trail behind wishing we'd act our age and show some dignity."

"I love how you typecast me as the stuffy one," Liz growled dangerously.

"Ten years ago you were the lusty wench. Want to bring that back?"

"I could remind you that you've been mistaken for a man 45 times... and one was a freaking fortune cookie..."

_What strange and amusing women, _Doc thought.


	9. End

Hello to everybody - this is the Gaelige half of the writing team. Unfortunately, Rambler and I have to declare this fic to be at least comatose. The prognosis isn't promising, as I am starting nursing school the end of the month and she - well, I do believe that a lack of impetus would be the correct term.

A thousand thanks to everybody who read, reviewed, or made suggestions.

-Gaelige.


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